Jennifer N. Baumgartner

• PostDoc Position at University of California, San Diego

Objectives Breathing rate and pain are influenced by a spectrum of cognitive, affective, and physiological interactions. Yet, it is unknown if an individual’s resting breathing rate is associated with pain. Methods Continuous cerebral blood flow (CBF) and respiration rate were collected in 74 healthy participants during innocuous (35 °C) and noxio...

The first of three volumes, the five sections of this book cover a variety of issues important in developing, designing, and analyzing data to produce high-quality research efforts and cultivate a productive research career. First, leading scholars from around the world provide a step-by-step guide to doing research in the social and behavioral sci...

Objectives Applying the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat, the present research investigated the differential cognitive, affective, behavioral, and psychophysiological responses of experienced mindfulness meditation practitioners and non-meditators in response to an acute laboratory stressor. We also tested whether perceptions of closen...

The experience of rejection and disconnection reliably amplifies pain. Yet, little is known about the impact of enduring feelings of closeness, or social connectedness, on experiences of chronic pain. The current secondary analysis tested the hypothesis that greater social connectedness would predict lower chronic pain ratings, mediated by lower de...

The subjective experience of pain is driven by multiple physiological and psychological mechanisms supported by a dynamic interplay between low-level afferent input and higher-order cerebral mechanisms. Volitional changes in respiration rate predict changes in pain. However, it is unknown if naturally slower breathing rate is associated with lower...

Objective The transition into college can pose barriers for student success. We examined the impact of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) compared to an active and no treatment control group, respectively, on stressor appraisals, academic persistence, and performance in unversity students. Participants Students were randomly assigned to rec...

Pleasant sensation is an underexplored avenue for modulation of chronic pain. Deeper pressure is perceived as pleasant and calming, and can improve sleep. Although pressure can reduce acute pain, its effect on chronic pain is poorly characterized. The current remote, double-blind, randomized controlled trial tested the hypothesis that wearing a hea...

Mindfulness meditation reliably reduces pain. We have repeatedly found that mindfulness-based analgesia is associated with thalamic deactivation and prefrontal-cortical (PFC) activation. Our working theoretical model proposes that mindfulness-induced shifts in executive attention facilitate pain-relief by PFC-driven thalamic inhibition to reduce th...

The relationship between non-volitionally controlled breathing and pain remains unknown. The psychological mechanisms supporting this relationship are also poorly characterized. Anxiety and dispositional mindfulness, two antithetical constructs, are postulated to mediate the relationship between pain and respiration. Anxiety increases breathing and...

Purpose of review: This review examines recent (2016 onwards) neuroscientific findings on the mechanisms supporting mindfulness-associated pain relief. To date, its clear that mindfulness lowers pain by engaging brain processes that are distinct from placebo and vary across meditative training level. Due to rapid developments in the field of conte...

The advent of neuroimaging methodologies, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has significantly advanced our understanding of the neurophysiological processes supporting a wide spectrum of mind-body approaches to treat pain. A promising self-regulatory practice, mindfulness meditation, reliably alleviates experimentally induced an...

Inter-individual differences in pain are shaped by a myriad of interactions between physiological, cognitive-affective and psychosocial factors. Interestingly, recent findings demonstrate that slow breathing-based manipulations reduce pain. Yet, it is unknown if non-manipulated, resting breathing rate predicts variability in behavioral and neural p...

When people vest a position with moral conviction, that is, a sense that the position is grounded in fundamental right or wrong, good or bad, they tend to be particularly intolerant of those who disagree. Psychological states that mitigate or augment the effect of moral conviction on tolerance are lesser known. The present research investigated the...

We investigated the relationship between optimism and psychological, behavioral, and psychophysiological stress responses. We expected that optimism would relate to challenge appraisals, more positive and less negative affect, better performance, and challenge physiological patterns. 153 participants reported their stressor appraisals and state aff...

People who vest their positions with strong moral conviction desire more social distance from attitudinally dissimilar others than people whose positions are weak in moral conviction (Skitka, Bauman, & Sargis, 2005). The goal of the present research was to test the moderating effects of mindlessness and mindfulness on the link between moral convict...